Baseball: Boston Red Sox entering the month of boons, swoons

If there is something wrong with the furnace, you'll find out in January. If anything's wrong under the hood of the car, January is when it'll wind up on the hook of a tow truck.

In more than one September, the Red Sox have wound up on that hook.

But not as often as one might think. It's just that past September swoons have been so dramatically sickening that the memories never go away, like a case of food poisoning.

September matters.

Boston's last three Septembers have been lousy, and the team has missed the playoffs each time. Last year really doesn't matter, as bad as it was. The Sox were not going to make the playoffs even with a good month, and as Bobby Valentine said — being ridiculed for his honesty — it was as bad a roster as any Boston team has had since before Tom Yawkey bought the team.

The collapse of 2011 matters, since it involved a team that went from first to out-of-the-playoffs in a matter of four weeks. Looking back, that collapse was the Red Sox' version of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, a harbinger of things to come.

This is the fifth Red Sox team to be in first place since the wild-card playoff format was adopted in 1995. The 1995 and 2007 Sox went on to finish first.

The 2005 Sox tied for first with New York, but were awarded second on a tiebreaker. The 2011 team led by 1½ games on the morning of Sept. 1 and finished third, missing out on postseason play with a loss in Game 162.

The forensic report on the death of the 2011 Sox was a short one. Their playoff hopes were killed by lousy starting pitching. That team hit .280 and averaged 5.4 runs a game in September, but the ERA of its starting rotation was 7.08. It was a rotation that included Andrew Miller, Erik Bedard and Kyle Weiland, which explains much of the problem.

It also explains why this year's Sox are in a better position to avoid a meltdown. Their pitching depth has been such that they have withstood the loss of Clay Buchholz for three months and maintained their lead in the AL East. In a 10-game stretch that began with the start of the West Coast trip and went through Friday night's 4-3 victory over the White Sox, Boston went 7-3, and its starting rotation had a 2.11 ERA.

The memory of 2011 is one reason Ben Cherington went out and got Jake Peavy. It's another reason the Sox have been so cautious with Buchholz — they will need him a lot more in September than they did in July, even if the standings don't make a distinction as to when you win a game.

Starting with the Tigers Monday afternoon, Boston plays 18 games with teams currently in playoff contention. Seven are against the Yankees, who will always be an elephant in the kitchen for Red Sox teams, no matter what happened in 2004.

Because they have had the misfortune of playing in the same division and same league as the Yankees, the most successful franchise in baseball, the Sox have rarely been in first place at the start of September. In fact, 2013 is already a pretty special season for the franchise. In the last 93 years — since 1920, when the balance of American League power shifted from Boston to New York — the Red Sox have been in first place on the morning of Sept. 1 just 13 times, including this year. They've wound up in the World Series five of those times and once, 2004, won when they were not in first on the first.

At some point in the future, an archaeologist will uncover a Mayan inscription that translates into "You'll only go as far as your starting pitching takes you."

New England's collective memory of the Collapse of '11 is like its recollection of the Blizzard of '78. It will never entirely disappear, and the first snowflake of December will always create a stampede to the dairy aisle.

With 2011 in mind, the Sox have tried to fortify their rotation. The plan has worked to date, but the most crucial test comes in the next four weeks.

Baseball Jeopardy

Answers.

1. He was the only Red Sox pitcher to record a win during the final 13 games of the 2012 season.

2. He holds the Red Sox record for most career home runs by a player less than 6 feet tall.

3. The state that has played host to the most All-Star Games.

Questions below.

No support for Lackey

The way wins and losses are awarded to pitchers was put in place around 1920, which explains why it is not the best tool to use in evaluating starting pitchers. John Lackey is on his way to posting the second-best ERA of his career (maybe the best when it's over), behind only the 3.01 he had in 2007 when he was 19-9.

Lackey is just 8-11. He could wind up being the first Sox pitcher to have the lowest ERA on the team — minimum 162 innings — and be below .500 since Tom Gordon in 1997, when he was 6-10 with a team-best 3.74 ERA. If, perchance, Lackey finishes with an ERA below 3.00, he'll be the first Sox pitcher since Lee Stange in 1967 to be under 3.00, and under .500. Stange was 8-10, 2.77 for the Impossible Dream Sox.

Matsuzaka in the Big Apple

Reports from those who have watched Daisuke Matsuzaka pitch for the Mets indicate that he may be the one man the City That Never Sleeps can't stay awake to watch. … Interesting note out there, the seed first planted by PA announcer Henry Mahegan, about Xander Bogaerts and Jennings Poindexter being the only Boston players with the same letters as "Red Sox" in their names. Heck, there have only been 38 Red Sox players with an "x" in either of their names. … Birthday greetings are due for two Sox octogenarians, both pitchers. Lefty Dean Stone turns 84 today, and righty Tom Brewer, arguably Boston's best starting pitcher in the 1950s, will be 82 on Tuesday. Brewer is one of only four Sox pitchers in the last 75 years to finish a season with exactly 19 wins. Jon Lester did it in 2010, Pedro Martinez in 1998 and Rick Wise in 1975. … This is Terry Francona's 13th season as a major league manager, and even though his teams have won two World Series and made the playoffs five times, he has never finished higher than fourth in Manager of the Year voting — Francona was fifth, believe it or not, in 2004. Depending on how the Indians do next month, Francona has a shot at winning the award this year. You'd have to think that he, Joe Maddon, Joe Girardi and John Farrell are the leading candidates at present. Boston has not had the Manager of the Year since Jimy Williams in 2000.

Success down on the farm

The Boston farm system will finish with its best overall won-lost record since 2008. Its teams had combined for a .518 winning percentage, and that was dragged down by Greenville, which is about 35 games under .500.

Pawtucket at Triple A, Salem of the Class-A Carolina League, Lowell of the short-season New York-Penn League and both Sox rookie teams — the Gulf Coast League and Dominican Summer League — are all either in first place or in contention for it.

Catching up with…

Cup-of-coffee first baseman Aaron Bates and pitcher David Pauley are with Sugarland of the Atlantic League; DH Morgan Burkhart, the first independent league graduate to play for Boston, is the hitting coach for the Padres' Class-A affiliate in Fort Wayne; and one-game catcher Marcus Jensen is a coach in the Athletics' farm system.

Bill Buckner is the hitting coach at Boise, the Cubs' affiliate in the Pioneer League; lefty Tony Fossas is the pitching coach at Class-A Dayton for the Reds; popular fourth outfielder Jim "Pigpen" Dwyer is coaching in the Twins' farm system at Class-A Fort Myers.

Jeopardy questions

1. Who is Junichi Tazawa? Tazawa was the winning pitcher for Boston on Sept. 23, 2012. The Red Sox beat Baltimore, 2-1, at Fenway as part of their 1-12 finish to the season.

2. Who is Carl Yastrzemski? Yaz hit 452 home runs, second on the Sox' all-time list, and was 5-foot-11.

3. What is California? There have been 11 All-Star Games played there — three each in San Francisco and Anaheim, two in both Los Angeles and San Diego, and one in Oakland. Ohio is next with 10.